Cultural Politics in the Third World

Mehran Kamrava

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781135367862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

First Published in 1999. This book does not aim to offer a new or radically different interpretation of the ongoing debate over cultural geography. Kamrava states nor does it seek to present a universal theory of what Third World countries have done or ought to do as they navigate the political, economic and sociocultural traumas of development. Instead, it tries to place culture in its proper political perspective in the Third World.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

After years of neglect and abandon, obscured by the weighty shadows of structures and rational choices, culture is once again making a comeback in political science. While in certain academic circles it is still taboo to talk of the possible importance of culture – whose study many social scientists continue to consider as “unscientific” – a growing number of scholars have begun to take a second look at the long neglected phenomenon. The end of the Cold War and the demise of communism, which effectively put an end to at least one field of study within political science, have given added impetus to the rediscovery of culture as a respectable subject of study, effectively creating a whole new subdiscipline for political scientists. Today, the role of culture in politics is being studied from a variety of angles and perspectives. Scholars such as Larry Diamond have focused much of their attention on political culture, first celebrated by Almond and Verba more than 30 years ago, looking specifically at its role in undermining authoritarian states and ushering in democratic rule.¹ As Chapter 6 demonstrates, other students of civil society have been equally attentive to the role and significance of political culture. Benjamin Barber, meanwhile, has analyzed the cultural as well as political consequences of the conflict between consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism in shaping international relations.² Edward Said has used culture to deconstruct Orientalism, itself based almost entirely on examination of cultural traits and characteristics,³ and Samuel Huntington, whose earlier writings overlooked culture almost completely, has, perhaps more than anyone else, resorted to culture to give expression to the emerging field of cultural geography.⁴

This book does not aim to offer a new or radically different interpretation of the ongoing debate over cultural geography. Nor does it seek to present a universal theory of what Third World countries have done or ought to do as they navigate the political, economic and sociocultural traumas of development. Instead, it tries to place culture in its proper political perspective in the Third World. In most recent political science publications, culture is either completely ignored or is deified, considered either as an epiphenomenon best left for second-rate scholars to dwell on or an explain-all panacea whose overlooking means one’s academic credentials are suspect. While not seeking to put a definitive end to this debate, this book tries to present a more balanced view of the proper role that culture plays within and in relation to politics. Culture and politics are innately intertwined, the book claims, but neither is overwhelming and overpowering of the other. Cultures and civilizations are not clashing; politicians and diplomats may be. Simple political crafting in the form of policy-making or institution building does not “fix” things; cultural forces may also need to be grappled with. These arguments are developed theoretically in Chapters 2 and 3, and then applied to political culture, cultural articulation and democratization and in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 respectively.

Chapter 2 examines the debate over the larger role of culture in determining new global politics and civilizational realignments. Chapter 3 concentrates on domestic politics, exploring the specific place of culture in relation to other phenomena in conceptualizing and examining Third World politics. Chapter 4 looks at the continued usefulness of political culture as a distinguishing phenomenon throughout the globe in general and within the Third World in particular. Drawing the book’s focus still narrower, Chapters 5 and 6 focus on two recent and/or ongoing political developments whose appearance, evolution and success cannot be made possible without the profound involvement of cultural dynamics. The first is the evolution of what may be called “the politics of being”, focusing on how issues touching on one’s sense of identity effect the state. This is discussed in Chapter 5. The second development, discussed in Chapter 6, is the appearance and consolidation of democracy in the last decade or so. I have chosen these two topics for these chapters because they tend to represent the structuralist/ culturalist extremes of recent scholarship in political science. Almost all discussions of the articulations and expressions of culture – in both the West as well as in the Third World – down-play any importance that politics in general and state initiatives in particular may have. Chapter 5 highlights the interconnected nature of both, focusing on the mutual influences that the state and culture exert on one another. Similarly, an overwhelming majority of scholars writing on democratization have either minimized the importance of such cultural forces as civil society, or, alternatively, have emphasized its significance at the expense of other, equally important dynamics. Thus democratization provides a most fertile area of analysis in which to articulate the nature and degree of the relationship between culture and politics. I have deliberately chosen to bring the book’s main discussion to a close with a treatment of democratization in order to highlight the interconnected nature of political endeavours with cultural forces and dynamics. The conclusion draws on the previous chapters to reiterate the book’s main thesis concerning the interplay of culture and politics in the Third World.

In its own way, each of the following chapters is designed to highlight the inseparability of culture and politics. This is not to maintain, however, that all politics is culturally determined, as Professor Samuel Huntington has done. There is a fine relationship between the two, the subtleties of which are highlighted in Chapter 2. Culture is important to politics, I maintain, but it needs to be put in a proper perspective and looked at within a broader context within which a number of forces interact and mutually influence one another. These forces are discussed in Chapter 3. The chapter maintains that the study of comparative politics in general and Third World politics in particular requires the adoption of a far more holistic approach than hitherto popular, one that takes into account not only political dynamics but those related to the economy, society and culture, and even history as well. It examines the various paradigmatic approaches that scholars have recently chosen in conceptualizing the Third World and concludes by offering an alternative perspective for analysis. Existing paradigms in comparative politics have proven unsatisfactory in taking into account the important contributions made to politics by the very elements that constitute it. A new comparative paradigm is needed, one which would pay attention not only to the mutual interactions of state and societal institutions but also to political culture and to other non-institutional, situational predicaments in which political systems find themselves. The various state-society power relations found across the globe have generally given rise to political systems that are either democratic, democratizing or non-democratic. In each of these polities, the various elements of politics – state, society, political culture and predicaments – have a different relationship with one another, in turn reinforcing and sustaining that particular pattern of political rule.

Chapter 5 examines the question of state intervention, or lack thereof, into culture. Some states are by nature more culturally interventionist (and sensitive) than others. The chapter proposes a typology of the states that is likely to be found in the Third World and examines the likelihood that each may intervene in the cultural realm. Moreover, the chapter looks at social and cultural dynamics that are likely, with varying degrees of intensity, to impact the agendas and operations of the state.

Chapter 6 concentrates on the role that civil society plays in democratic transitions. The chapter maintains that not all of the new democracies are equally democratic. Ultimately, the degree to which a political system is genuinely democratic rests not on its political characteristics but more on the depth and maturity of the civil society on which it is based and on which it relies. The notion of civil society itself needs to be distinguished from that of civil society organization, only a combination of the latter making up the former. In so far as democratic outcomes are concerned, the timing of the evolution and precise role of civil society could potentially be far more important than the politics of negotiations, the characteristics of institutional democratic consolidation, and the outcome of post-transition elections. In cases where civil society initially takes a back seat to political and institutional dynamics that bring about democratization, the outcome could potentially be a quasi-democratic system if the victors of the transition process are not genuinely committed to the ideals of representative democracy. But where civil society emerges first and compels social actors to actively seek after democratic goals, the incoming democratic polity tends to be far more representative of the broader strata of society. It is, in other words, a viable democracy.

With the dramatic events of the past decade or so have come new uncertainties over the precise definition of the “Third World”.⁵ No longer is it simply enough to look at the economic and industrial predicaments of a country, or the nature of its political system, to determine the category to which it belongs. In fact, the world has changed so much so rapidly that the very designation “Third World” appears anachronistic and in serious need of being reworded. I have to admit that I have used the label here with some trepidation and wish a better substitute had been developed. “Developing countries” is equally unsatisfying, as some of its current usage is motivated more by political correctness rather than any academic merits. I have therefore decided to continue using the label “Third World” throughout this book, hopeful that the current generation of students and readers still remember the regions for which the label was originally devised.

Alas, the world has changed, and so with it the usage of the term “Third World” here. In using the label Third World, I wish to include all countries belonging to Africa, Asia (except for Japan), and Latin America. I have tried to include as many diverse examples as possible from each of these continents, although the discussion of democratization in Chapter 6 also draws examples from East and Central Europe, where many of the political and cultural forces at work were similar to those in Latin America.

Naturally, any study of the sort undertaken here has to suffer (or benefit) from a certain level of generality. The aim here is not to cover the multiple areas of cultural politics in every country or even every region of the Third World, but rather to highlight some of the more important features in this area of investigation that the countries of the Third World tend to have in common. In writing this book, I have sought to paint a general picture of the inter-relationship between politics and culture in the Third World. Filling in the details, or applying the overall frameworks proposed here to specific cases, can be much better done by area and country specialists.

Notes

1. See, among others, Almond and Verba 1963 and Diamond 1994.

2. Barber 1995.

3. Said 1979, 1993.

4. Perhaps best representative of Huntington’s non-cultural analyses is his seminal work on political development, Political Order in Changing Societies, 1968. In the opposite extreme, his works on cultural geography are his article, “The clash of civilizations?”, 1993: 22–49, and his book by the same title, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996. For more on this see Chapter 2.

5. See, for example, Berger, 1994: 257–75, Kamrava 1993: 703–16, and Manor 1991.

CHAPTER TWO

Cultural Politics in the New World Order

The new face of international politics is shaped not so much by military and ideological competition but by inherently conflictual characteristics within fundamentally different civilizations and cultural fault lines.¹ In fact, “for the first time in centuries, the West may face serious threats from other, non-Western cultures as the next century unfolds.”² In some ways, the future is already here, as a protracted clash of civilizations is pitting the Judeo-Christian West against an Islamic civilization whose “crescent-shaped . . . bloc, from the bulge of Africa to central Asia, has bloody borders.”³ But Islam is neither unique nor alone in its opposition to Western values and civilization. Japanese, Hindu, Sinic (i.e. Chinese/ Confucian), African, and Eastern Orthodox cultures also embody values that stand in sharp contrast to the Western ideals of Christianity, rule of law, social pluralism, political democracy, individualism, and the separation of church and state.⁴“The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness.”⁵ In the coming clash – whether violent or relatively calm, sudden or gradual – the West is certain to emerge victorious because of the very values that form its core and in reaction to which the conflict erupted in the first place. Western values are, after all, universal and “will ultimately become widespread.”⁶ The above paragraph, in broad strokes and without doing justice to the many subtleties that mark the arguments of those quoted in it, sums up one of the most pervasive lines of reasoning in Western academic circles since the end of the Cold War. Such arguments have spawned others of similar caliber, in turn provoking sharp and varied reactions from a host of critics and detractors.⁷ My purpose in this chapter is not necessarily to join in a debate that has already been exhaustively analyzed in numerous books and journal articles. Instead, I wish to draw on the insights offered by proponents and critics of the increasingly prevalent field of “cultural geography” to highlight some of the basic dilemmas and dynamics that are at work in the cultural politics of the non-Western world. For obvious reasons arising from the nature of this book, my main concern is not so much with the challenges to the West and its values per se, a task for which the self-appointed defenders of the Western tradition are much better suited.⁸ Rather, I wish to focus on the politics of cultural geography within the Third World, or, more specifically, on the nature and consequences of interactions between national and extra-national cultural values within Third World countries.

In the main, the central thesis of the present chapter is as follows: In so far as each Third World country is concerned, it has to contend with two overlapping and inter-related yet distinct cultures, one domestic and indigenous, the other global and extra-national. In itself, culture, whether global or indigenous, has two facets or, better put, subcultures. Material or scientific culture, derived from those aspects of life related to machines and other industrial inventions, contrasts with adaptive, or normative, culture, which is based on and primarily derived from customs, habits, patterns of socialization, and other individual or collective endeavours dealing with the human psyche. In both global and domestic cultures, the material and adaptive subcultures intersect and interact. Since the West has been the primary originator of science and industry since the Industrial Revolution, domestic and global material subcultures converge into one, although the former often lags behind the latter. Does this then mean that global culture eventually overwhelms and subsumes domestic culture? Or, put more bluntly, is global – i. e. Western – culture universal?

My answer, in typically noncommittal academic fashion, is “not necessarily”. There are two elements to consider here. First, domestically, each adaptive culture is often bifurcated, divided with varying degrees of intensity into the authentic and the altered, the “traditional” and the “modern”.⁹ Although the “modern” aspects of a culture may have far more prevalence and currency in a nation as compared with more traditional cultural elements, the latter do not always fade away and often retain a strong hold among certain segments of the population, at times even manifesting themselves in violent forms. Religion, often the most traditional of cultural elements, provides a ready example of the continued hold of tradition on cultures. Witness the growing incidents of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, Muslim fundamentalism in the Arab world and Iran, Hindu fundamentalism in India, and even right-wing activism by religious fundamentalists and the militia movement in the United States.

Moreover, in almost all Third World countries, there is a second factor to consider: the role that the state assumes in relation to culture. All states, whether they want to or not, influence and in some ways shape popular culture.¹⁰ Some states, however, take a far more active role not only in patronizing but also protecting what they consider to be essential elements of cultural identity. Extreme examples include Khomeini’s Iran and today’s Saudi Arabia, although these two cases, especially Saudi Arabia, bespeak more of cultural paranoia than anything else. In large measure, therefore, the vitality of an indigenous culture, the popular currency of its more authentic versus less traditional aspects, and its overall synthesis with or rejection of global culture depend on what the state does and on its social, cultural and political agendas.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Figure
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Conclusion
• Bibliography